Rifts vs Skies Above

Compare Rifts and Skies Above side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Rifts	Skies Above
Genre	Post-Apocalyptic, Scifi, Fantasy, Horror, Superhero	Fantasy
Tags	Character Building, Combat-Heavy, Crunchy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Gonzo, High-Power, Mana Points, Mecha, Superpowers, Tactical	JRPG, Cinematic, Tactical, High-Fantasy, Heroic, Character Building, Mana Points, Theater of the Mind, Lore-Heavy
Core Mechanic	Combat and saving throws use a d20 plus bonuses, with high results overcoming a target number or opposing roll. Skills use d100 and succeed when the result is at or below the character's percentage.	Roll d8 + two Attributes + modifiers against a Target Number (typically 10, increasing in steps of 4 for harder tasks). Natural 8s explode, rolling and adding again; every additional 8 raises the Critical Level, scaling damage and effects. A natural 1 is an Epic Fail that halves the character's Defences until their next turn. Critical hits dealt and taken generate Overdrive: once eight stacks accumulate, characters spend them to take an additional action that round, modeling the limit-break payoff of classic JRPGs.
Dice	d20, d100	d8
Complexity	Very High	Medium
Accessibility	Medium	High
Runnability	Very High	High
License	All Rights Reserved	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Noncommercial only — Palladium Books Internet Policy limited license	Not yet researched
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	$$	$$
Publisher	Palladium Books Inc.	Lost Haven Studio
Year	2005	2026
Languages	English	English
Best For	Groups who want long-form science-fantasy campaigns that move from a ruined Earth to other dimensions. The game suits tables whose GM will decide which parts of the broad setting a campaign uses.	Groups who want a JRPG-inspired tabletop adventure: picking from twelve jobs like Dragoon, Dark Mage, or Engineer, channeling elemental magic blessed by eight goddesses, and journeying by airship across floating sky-islands in the aftermath of a magical cataclysm.
Highlights	Occupational and racial class packages assign distinct abilities and advancement tracks, giving each archetype a different role in the party. Mega-Damage places many supernatural creatures and war machines on a separate durability scale beyond the reach of ordinary Structural Damage Capacity attacks. Rifts and ley lines make dimensional travel a standing feature of the setting, letting campaigns move between devastated Earth and other worlds.	Exploding d8 with stacking Critical Levels: multiple natural 8s in a row cascade into larger crits and bigger effects, so heroic moments scale rather than cap. Overdrive accumulates from critical hits dealt and received, and spending eight stacks grants an additional action that round, giving combat a JRPG limit-break rhythm. Twelve job roles span melee, magic, ranged, and support archetypes, and characters add a second job at level 12 to cross-pollinate abilities and weapon ranks. Eight elemental goddesses anchor both magic and the bestiary: every Skyfolk lineage is blessed with resistance to one element, and creatures carry specific elemental weaknesses that double incoming damage.
Considerations	Character creation combines rolled attributes with extensive skill selection, making first-time preparation lengthy. Combat asks each player to track an action economy, active defenses, and which damage scale applies. Magic and psionics use separate point pools and power procedures, adding class-specific rules to the shared system.	Combat is the most heavily detailed pillar of the rules, with conditions, elemental damage, front/back row positioning, and an optional battlefield grid: investigation, intrigue, and downtime get coverage but less mechanical depth. Light and Dark Mages cannot learn from the opposing path, locking each spellcaster out of half the elemental spell list and pushing magical variety into multi-job characters. The exploding-d8 swing is wide: consecutive 8s can demolish encounters while a natural 1 halves a character's Defences and opens them to brutal counters. Setting and mechanics are tightly woven: Skyfolk lineages, the eight Goddesses, and post-Breaking lore are baked into character options rather than presented as swappable flavor.